19

PACK MENTALITY

You know, I used to watch that television show Survivor,” Cory said. “This camp is nothing like that.”

I had thought that Cory would be more relaxed after the full moon, but he was worse than he’d been before he started making progress. Chai probably knew why. I didn’t.

“In Survivor, they just showed people sitting around a campfire roasting animals on a stick,” Cory continued. He was trying to grouse, not growl, but frustration was building in his voice and sweat. “Wilderness movies are like that too. They make it look easy.”

“Wild animals sometimes have flukes or worms,” I observed. We were in the process of cutting half a dozen snowshoe hares into very small chunks and dropping them in a boiling pot of water. Boiling meat really doesn’t take too much of the flavor out, and most of the paw still tended to burn meat over a live flame, leave it charred on the outside and raw on the inside.

“Besides, it’s too early to start complaining,” I added. “Next time we get some large game, I’ll show you how to use intestinal casings to make sausage.”

Cory cursed and Mayte smiled at me wryly while Cory’s head was bent down over his task. Ah, her look seemed to say. Male bonding.

Sig spasm. It was getting really annoying, the way Sig itched at my soul. I had tried to banish Sig from my thoughts, make up my mind once and for all that Sig and I were never going to happen and get over it. Then at least maybe whatever was going or not going on with us would stop worrying at me so that I could concentrate on little things like staying alive.

Wait. Cory had said something. “What?”

Mayte gave me a different kind of look. The tension coming off Cory had suddenly amped up.

“I said, why don’t you just fuck her.” Cory’s teeth were gritted and he was glaring at Mayte. His hands were tight around his knife and he wanted to hit something. “She wants you to. You want to. Just fuck her.”

I should have had some moment where I realized that this was part of what was eating at Cory, or at least the part he felt comfortable blaming. He was a young male and hadn’t been good at processing emotions before he became a werewolf, and now he had somehow convinced himself that he was in love with Mayte on top of everything else he was going through, or maybe as a way to deal with it. Or maybe he really cared about her. What did I know? I should have gained some kind of empathy or insight.

Instead, I kicked the pot over and sent boiling water scalding over Cory’s shin. He screamed and tried to leap back but I held him in place by spearing my knife through the radial nerve in his right wrist.

The knife Cory had been holding fell to the ground.

Cory had improved as a fighter over our last few sparring sessions. He managed to tear my knife out of my hand with his body weight, but when he tried to move his left hand over to grab the hilt sticking out of the back of his wrist, I followed him in and swiveled, pulled the outside of his wrist with one hand, and broke his elbow with a forearm hammer from my other.

Cory screamed again, turned and tried to use the right arm that had a useless knife sticking out of it, but I went with the motion again, whirling inside his reach, dropping and using my weight to tear him off his feet, to turn him, to bring his own momentum and weight on top of mine and throw his back down on my knee.

His spine broke with a loud snap. So did I. My personality fractured into two completely different sets of reactions and drives, and I dropped Cory to the ground, paralyzed between a desire to step back and a desire to step on his throat.

All that sparring with Cory… he knew what I could do and he was still talking smack. Daring me to do something he couldn’t stop, and why? Mayte? Hopeless. Two seconds and he was already belly up and exposing his throat. Had he been bitten by a wolf or a bunny? I bent down slightly and pulled my knife free. “You shouldn’t be worried about what Mayte or I do, Cory.” My voice was a growl. “The only thing you should be asking is what you can do. Nobody can save you here but you. So stop arguing and start listening and figure out how to do that.”

What the hell was happening here? I don’t use violence unless I have to. That’s one of my rules, my warning flags. Did the fact that Cory would heal quickly or that talking wasn’t getting through to him really excuse this? I couldn’t control Cory. The only person I could control was me. I had never hurt anyone who was so much weaker than me and who wasn’t actively threatening me or someone else. Cory’s long-term chances might have just gone up because of what I’d done, but regardless of the intent, the act itself was that of a sadist or a bully. This wasn’t who or what I wanted to be.

Cory’s eyes were bulging and the sounds coming from him were gasping whimpers.

“This is what it means to be a lone wolf, Cory,” I said. “I’ve been one my whole long life, and trust me, you only have two choices if you want to survive here. Get a lot smarter and tougher fast, or join the Clan with all your heart and soul.”

I heard those words being spoken by my voice and wondered where they were coming from.

It takes a lot to make me throw up, but the sight of Cory’s body beneath me came close. This wasn’t me. This wasn’t me. I had stepped over one of the boundaries I’d set up to make sure I never became evil, and I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d sworn to kill myself if I found myself doing things I had no control over, and here I was, standing over a burned and broken boy with no real training who hadn’t attacked me directly.

“Pick up that meat and start another fire when you’re done healing,” Mayte told Cory, and she tapped me on the arm. I let her lead me away from where Cory was twitching and sobbing on the ground.